Yes, it is.\u00a0 The race barrier broken, the referendum on the 43d US president, George W. Bush won overwhelmingly, there will be a basic change in the image of the United States of America all over the world.\u00a0 People around the world love to love USA, warts and all.\u00a0 Bush made it impossible for most, Obama makes it easy, natural.\u00a0 The biggest win for a Democratic candidate in popular votes since 1964, a landslide in electoral votes, a one party country, President-Senate-House united.\u00a0 The road is open.<\/p>\n
Well, maybe a New Beginning, maybe not.\u00a0 Obama’s foreign policy is not anti-Empire, had it been McCain would have won.\u00a0 Ramon Lopez-Reyes (lop-rey.zop-hi@worldnet.att.net), psychoanalyst rooted in Freud, Jung and deep cultural understanding around the world, and a retired Lt.Col. -with three years he deeply regrets in Vi\u00eat Nam- sees McCain as an embodiment of the warrior-hero archetype, with a post-traumatic stress disorder.\u00a0 A very dangerous man. The election was over the job as administrator of the dying US Empire, and in T.S. Eliot’s words, “This is the way the world ends–Not with a bang but a whimper,\u201d McCain would end it with a bang.\u00a0 Maybe even a nuclear bang.<\/p>\n
Obama will do so with a whimper.\u00a0 He embodies much of what the world would hope for in a world president.\u00a0 The world will give him a honeymoon, maybe one hundred days counting from the inauguration 20 January next year.\u00a0 But if they find that he essentially walks the same trails trodden by his predecessors even his charisma will not save him.\u00a0 There will be deception and sarcasms from all over, and his failure to preside over the fall graciously will speed up that fall.\u00a0 And here Lopez-Reyes enters, seeing Obama as an alchemist, trying to produce gold in a laboratory he neither understands nor controls.<\/p>\n
He is up against the forces of secret treaties, secret findings from the “intelligence” community, military-industrial complexes, corporate USA and–the dark specter–the real threat of assassination.\u00a0 John F. Kennedy.\u00a0 Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n
And yet there are possibilities, in spite of his advisors, the old gang.\u00a0 Buffet, Powell, Summers, Brzezinski.\u00a0 Obama’s position on Afghanistan reads like Brzezinski’s analysis of the grand chess board, inspired by century old McKinder geopolitics seeing Central Asia as crucial for the control of the world–a vision that has fascinated several US presidents.<\/p>\n
To see Afghanistan as the center of “terrorism” is wrong; for Muslim resistance in neighboring Chechnya and Kashmir yes, but not for Muslims in all the 25+ countries the West has trampled upon in the last century.\u00a0 Communism could give in to reality and implode, unable to overcome the disconnect between myth and reality.\u00a0 But Islam, like Christianity, is a pact with divine forces, tested not in a social reality but in the souls of the devout.\u00a0 There will never be any capitulation.\u00a0 The war is unwinnable, two more combat brigades amount to nothing, European countries are sick and tired of the whole thing and increasingly feel, like the Swiss when they withdrew March this year, that they had been invited to a peacekeeping that turned out to be peace enforcement, a regular war.\u00a0 An additional $1 billion a year in nonmilitary assistance to Kabul-Karzai will feed corruption.\u00a0 And, to try to split the Taliban when they are all against secularization: only if USA withdraws completely.<\/p>\n
His policy on the Middle East freezes the untenable. Support for Georgia and Ukraine as NATO members steps up Cold War II.\u00a0 And Middle East: Israeli security is non-negotiable, but through equitable peace with all neighbors.\u00a0 They are ready.<\/p>\n
Any way out?\u00a0 Yes, there is one: secret negotiations, emerging with a done deal.\u00a0 He seems willing to talk with no preconditions, and would benefit from leaving his advisors behind in Washington.\u00a0 There is something new, fresh about Obama greatly needed in the world.\u00a0 He simply might understand that to solve a conflict there has to be a tit for tat, like withdrawing missiles from Turkey in return for the Soviet Union doing the same in Cuba.\u00a0 To demand that everybody else steps down in return for nothing is Empire.\u00a0 And the magic is gone.<\/p>\n
Travel to North Korea and offer a peace treaty, diplomatic relations, normalization–not only removal from the list of “terrorism”, in fact, drop that stupid vocabulary.\u00a0 The nuclear issue will wither away.\u00a0 As it will in Iran, if he offers an apology for the CIA-MI6 coup in 1953 against a legally elected prime minister, Mossadegh.\u00a0 Repair the past.\u00a0 Admit mistakes, in return for verifiable solutions.\u00a0 Solution orientation, not war.<\/p>\n
Talk with Hizbollah, Hamas, Syria, about the Middle East.\u00a0 They are willing to recognize a more modest Israel with fixed borders close to 4 June 1967 in return for an end to occupation, if possible with a nuclear free zone in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Travel to Russia.\u00a0 Respect their concerns, agree on an Andorra type solution for South Ossetia and a federation for Ukraine; stop NATO expansion in return for no Russian military presence in the Americas.\u00a0 Let Russia be Russia.<\/p>\n
And keep the 16 months promise in Iraq, adding an offer of generosity in rebuilding of the country after the devastation, even an admission that the 2003 invasion was a mistake.<\/p>\n
In short, try to short-circuit the usual trappings of the Empire.\u00a0 And the USA will gain enormously, both at the global level and domestically.<\/p>\n
Only keep in mind: Change, YES, WE CAN!<\/p>\n
________________________<\/p>\n
Note from the editor: Prof. Johan Galtung\u2019s book #5, The Fall of the US Empire\u2013And Then What? Successors, Regionalization or Globalization? US Fascism or US Blossoming?<\/strong>, will be released in December\/08 by TRANSCEND University Press-TUP<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yes, it is.\u00a0 The race barrier broken, the referendum on the 43d US president, George W. Bush won overwhelmingly, there will be a basic change in the image of the United States of America all over the world.\u00a0 People around the world love to love USA, warts and all.\u00a0 Bush made it impossible for most, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}